(366) Lauren Lovette, Resident Choreographer at Paul Taylor Dance Company
On today's episode of 'Conversations On Dance' we are joined by star ballerina and resident choreographer of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Lauren Lovette. We talk to Lauren about the leap of faith she took in leaving New York City Ballet to freelance, how her choreographic voice has developed since being offered her role as resident choreographer and what to expect from her dual world premieres this fall season. Tickets for Paul Taylor's fall season at the David H Koch theater this Oct 31st through Nov 12th can be purchased at paultaylordance.org.
THIS EPISODE'S SPONSOR:
New York Theatre Ballet celebrates its 45-year legacy with a Fall program of World and Company Premieres by Artistic Director Steven Melendez, Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, and Amanda Treiber, Friday, October 6 and Saturday, October 7 at Florence Gould Hall in New York City. New York Theatre Ballet performs small classic masterpieces and new contemporary works for adults and innovative hour-long ballets for young children, all at affordable prices. This season’s “Once Upon a Ballet” series features The Firebird and Merce Cunningham’s Scramble for four family-friendly shows, Saturday, October 7 and Sunday, October 8. For tickets and information, please visit NYTB.org/tickets.
LINKS:
Website: conversationsondancepod.com
Instagram: @conversationsondance
Merch: https://bit.ly/cod-merch
YouTube: https://bit.ly/youtube-COD
Join our email list: https://bit.ly/mail-COD
Email us: info@conversationsondancepod.com
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:48]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:49]:
And I'm Michael Sean Breeden. And you're listening to conversations on Dance. On today's episode of Conversations on Dance, we are joined by star, ballerina and resident choreographer of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Lauren Lovette. We talked to Lauren about the leap of faith she took in leaving New York City Ballet to freelance, how her choreographic voice has developed since being offered the role of resident choreographer, and what to expect from her dual world premieres this fall season. Tickets for Paul Taylor's fall season at the David H. Coke Theater this October 31 through November twelveTH can be purchased@paultaylordance.org. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us. We love having you on and we just got to see you in Vail.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:33]:
What year was that for you in terms of how many years you've been coming out there?
Lauren Lovette [00:01:37]:
Goodness, how do I even count? I've been coming since 2011.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:43]:
I was going to say over a decade, right?
Lauren Lovette [00:01:47]:
I mean, I missed one year because I had surgery on my foot. But no, the Vale Mountains have been such a steady staple in my life. I feel like it's where I've grown the most as an artist every summer. I'm pushed at the Vale Dance Festival boot Camp.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:02:08]:
You danced La Sonnabula this summer because I know you were posting about it. Was that something that was new for you? Tell us a little bit about that experience.
Lauren Lovette [00:02:15]:
Totally new for me. I do something new every year. That's something that I love about Damien and just they really take a lot of time to process and think about how they want their artists to grow. And I think that that's a really special thing. So, yeah, Los Anbula was always a dream. I thought I missed it because I left New York City Ballet. So I've been going to Vale for decade, for over a decade. And what I love about that festival is that not only is it I call it like the Pollinator dance festivals are like the bees for the dance world, and beyond that for music, too.
Lauren Lovette [00:02:57]:
It's this place where dancers of different disciplines, different companies, musicians, sometimes poets and artists and painters, and they all get together and we meet each other and we cross pollinate. And I think it's really important to the dance world to have those festivals, those types of events, so I would say for my health as an artist been super key in my career.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:03:29]:
Yeah. So there was an event this week, earlier this week, for alumni of New York City Ballet. It's the 75th anniversary for the company, and they had first on Monday, there was some sort of just social event, right? It was drinks and maybe dancing. I don't know. And then Tuesday was the opening night of Jewels, and everybody who had ever danced with the company got up on stage and bout. I was not there, but it seemed really beautiful. From social media, maybe you could tell us about your experience with these events.
Lauren Lovette [00:04:04]:
It was incredible. I'm so lucky I got to go. I had just flown in. I was choreographing with Colorado Ballet, and I had just flown in on Sunday, so I made it perfectly in time. And I'm so glad that I attended, because for me, it was to see so many artists in one room who all had the same but different experiences throughout an organization. To have that many artists all together, I felt a part of something really powerful, and there was so much energy in that space. I mean, every kind of energy, for better or worse. But I really did feel that, yes, I'm moving forward into this future, and I love looking toward the future.
Lauren Lovette [00:05:00]:
I love imagining how the dance world could look and how I could grow as a person and outside of dancing, too. But to come back and just acknowledge for a moment how I got to where I am and why I am where I am and to just say thank you in that space and to be around other people, that it's also such a stepping stone or such a I don't know what you would call it a brick in our story. And we all have individual stories, and it was fun to see where people had gone and what they'd done with their lives. And some of them go into other fields, some of them are directing companies, some of them are just out of it completely. And it was just fun to see, because there's not a right way to live your life. There isn't. And the ballet is a beautiful it's a family of sorts.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:06:00]:
That's what I was thinking of. It feels like the biggest family reunion ever, probably for all of you guys. So, boots on the ground, tell us a little bit, like, who you like. There were so many legends there. We're looking at the videos of everyone bowing like Suzanne Farrell's there our old director, Edward Velo is there. Did you get any interactions with some of these people that you maybe haven't seen in a long time or maybe haven't gotten to interact with before?
Lauren Lovette [00:06:25]:
Absolutely. I think what was most special for me was reconnecting with Jock Soto, who is my absolute favorite teacher in school. He taught partnering classes, and he would always use me to demonstrate, but it was never a set thing. It was something that I didn't want to take for granted. And every Friday, I remember partnering classes on Friday. Every Friday, I would show up and hide in the room because I didn't want to expect that he would choose me and stand in the middle. I'm here. So I would kind of just go off to the side, and he would look around, and he'd find me, and he'd take my hand, and he'd pull me center.
Lauren Lovette [00:07:07]:
And I remember that that always felt so validating and in so many ways, he taught me how to dance, because not only did he teach partnering from a choreographic sense, like, he would make the combination with you alongside you, but you wouldn't know what was going on. He would say, Fifth position on point, and I would go to fifth on point, and I wouldn't know anything that I was about to do. He would take complete control over the hand, and he would say no. If I did too much, he would shake my hand and say, no less. And so it was my job to just listen and feel and be so present in the moment and not worry about what came before or after and really trust my partner. And so Jock not only taught me how to partner, he taught me how to trust myself as a dancer. And so I was able to tell him that at the event. Hugging that felt I haven't seen him in years, like, since school.
Lauren Lovette [00:08:10]:
And so that was a really powerful moment. And then I also got to see Ricky Weiss and Melissa podcasty, who were, I think, former directors with Carolina Ballet. But I'm from North Carolina, and I tried after I didn't get into the New York City Ballet my last year in school at SAB, I tried to audition for Carolina Ballet and not come to New York. I was just going to do something else, and I showed up for the audition, and I remember it went pretty well. Ricky Weiss called me into his office, and he said something I'll never forget, and he need to he said, I really want to give you a job. I think you're dancing beautifully, and I want to hire you, but it would be a mistake. And so he said, I want you to go back to New York and you should repeat a year in school and try for the New York City Ballet. Because he think, I think that you can dance with the new York City Ballet, and I think you should try for and and then he said, if you don't go there, I think you should go to San Francisco Ballet.
Lauren Lovette [00:09:23]:
And then if you don't get in there, I want you to go to PMP. And he has this whole list, and then he said, and then if you don't get to those places, you come back here and I thought, wow, like, who does that? Who's that? Honest?
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:09:41]:
Literally no one. Not us all.
Lauren Lovette [00:09:44]:
And Melissa podcasty was my teacher for my first summer program when I was twelve. I didn't get into SAB, and so I ended up staying home in North Carolina and going to the Carolina Ballet's first summer program. And there were hardly any kids in the class because it was brand new. And Melissa was so hard as a so. I'm pretty sure I cried every day, but she made me so much stronger and I loved her for it. And the following summer, I got into the School of American Ballet with a full scholarship. And so it's so great to see them at the event and tell them those things to say, I am where I am because of you in so many ways. Melissa, for your training.
Lauren Lovette [00:10:29]:
That got me a full scholarship the next summer to SAB and Ricky for turning me down. Thank you for not giving me a job because I wouldn't have the life I have now.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:10:42]:
I bet there were so many conversations like that happening. I mean, even for those of us watching from the outskirts, we have those kinds of stories we can share with so many of those dancers that were there, too. They're just so many important people were in that room. So many people who have shaped ballet and are continuing to shape ballet, just like you are going on to do now.
Lauren Lovette [00:11:02]:
Thank you. Yeah, it felt to me like a gift, an opportunity to say thank you. And there were so many people I didn't even in that room, there were so many people I didn't see because it was that large. But just that opportunity, that chance to connect and reconnect was a real gift this week. A lot of emotions, I'm sure.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:11:28]:
Oh my gosh, that's quite the way.
Lauren Lovette [00:11:29]:
To start the week.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:11:31]:
Yeah. But I think it's a beautiful way to start your week because you have this moment. I mean, you always come off as someone who is immensely grateful for every step of your journey. And so to look back and reflect on your past that you're so appreciative of while you're taking these huge steps into the future for you is, I think, very beautiful. But let's talk about your present. I don't know that we've had a really good opportunity, since you decided to become freelance, to dive into it. We did have you on with Claudia Shrier in 2022, but we're mostly talking about your choreographic work. So I want to hear a little bit about how freelance has impacted your life as a dancer.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:12:17]:
Still, just talking about day to day upkeep of your body, does it feel better? Does it feel worse? What about performing? How has it changed your interaction with performing?
Lauren Lovette [00:12:30]:
What a great question, Michael.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:12:35]:
We're always thinking about how everyone's body is feeling. Let's be honest.
Lauren Lovette [00:12:40]:
It's funny because we all had it strange with the pandemic. That was the I don't know what you call that time period, but it was just this like we all went through that. But after I decided to leave ballet that time at the New York City Ballet, when I was there, I really felt that my body was chronically hurt in a lot of ways. Like I felt that my hips and my back and my ankles especially, were just I was in maintenance mode all the time. I felt like I was in survival mode all the time with my body a little bit. And so when I left, I wasn't sure what that would mean for my dancing. I was very ready to say, okay, maybe I'm done, maybe this is the end. But my body, just as soon as I took that step, it's like chapter two or something.
Lauren Lovette [00:13:42]:
Like I got a new body physically, which is so strange to say, but it's like all of those previous pains that I had in my body just left, and that left me with the desire to really move and I wanted to dance still. And so it's been exciting for me because I am my own now. I don't have to reach any standard other than the standard that I've set for myself. So if I feel healthy and strong and beautiful in my skin, that's what I am. I don't have to look at anyone next to me or above me for any kind of approval. And that's been a real gift. I just entered my thirty s, and so I'm in this part of my life where I feel like I'm very grateful for the body that I'm in. And the health of that and the well being of that is number one.
Lauren Lovette [00:15:00]:
So it's been pretty wonderful, I have to say. What I've put into my body, the food that I consume, strength has been a big goal of mine. More than shape. Strength over shape. I've been going and training, doing more gym like training, and not being afraid that maybe a muscle might grow in a place I don't want it to grow. It's been fun for me to still be dancing, but to be dancing in a different way, in a way that I can really listen to what's going on. So in so many ways it's been a gift, in other ways it's been a challenge. Like you have to pay for all of your own classes when you're freelance artists.
Lauren Lovette [00:15:52]:
That's not easy. I'm choreographing with a vengeance more than I've ever choreographed before. The work has been very gratefully, plentiful, and so balancing my schedules and traveling a lot has been a challenge. It's not the same as I'm in the same place with the same people, with my class for free every day, and I have this routine and I do it in that way. It's been more complex, so I have to listen to my body more. And health is the number one priority for me, and then outside of that, it's creativity and how to keep myself in shape, moving, flexible, strong. Yeah, it's been fun, honestly.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:16:49]:
Yeah. So while this is not certainly like you are having many choreographic opportunities, but obviously the crux of it is your role as resident choreographer at Paul Taylor Dance Company, which is a pretty incredible feat for anyone, but it is especially unusual for someone. Not only are you out of the modern dance world, it's not like, oh, I dance with the Graham Company for a million years and I go to Taylor, which would still be unusual, but you're like a completely different dance discipline. Let's hear the whole story here about how this opportunity came about. Did you put yourself forward? Did they kind of headhunt you? I just want to hear everything from the beginning of that first interaction.
Lauren Lovette [00:17:35]:
So Michael Novak, director of the Paul Taylor Company, saw not our fate. He saw the second work that I made for New York City Ballet when I choreographed there. And the way that he explained it to me is he thought I was somewhat of a rebel on the inside somehow. He didn't know me, but he felt that I had a little bit of a rebel spirit inside. He wanted to know what I would do with modern dancers. He said, I think she's a rebel in ballet, but I want to know what she's like with modern dancers and how that symmetry happens or if it can, or it was an experiment of sorts. So he invited me in to make one work for Paul Taylor Company. And this was January of 2020.
Lauren Lovette [00:18:39]:
I had only two Mondays off because we were in the middle of winter season. All of the ballets that go in the winter season, you just come out of Nutcracker. It's a pretty exhausting time. And I said, I have these two Mondays off that I can give you. And they were supposed to be experimental labs of a sort for me to go in and understand the world, how they move, kind of throw some material out there, see what happened. I had the commission, so I knew I was going to make a work for them, but I had these two days of play and so I went.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:19:26]:
It sounds like playtime, but I was terrified.
Lauren Lovette [00:19:33]:
I was absolutely terrified because so much of the room was older than me and they're trained in a different style. Like you said, I'm ballet trained and that was the only class I had as a kid. I had full scholarship for ballet only. No matter how badly I may have wanted to do the hip hop class, it just wasn't what was paid for. And I had what was paid for because my parents couldn't afford the classes. So in my heart of hearts, I've always wanted to get off the bar and rip the point shoes off and get in the ground but if we're being honest, my dorsiflexion in my ankles is trash. I have no demi daily. I am not meant to be in the floor.
Lauren Lovette [00:20:24]:
I'm meant to be floating above with.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:20:26]:
The point.
Lauren Lovette [00:20:29]:
My body. I was meant to be a Balanchine dancer where I could lift my heels slightly off the ground and I would have musicality at the forefront of my dancing and push the limits of ballet and stretch and reach and be off balance. And that was how I was going to find the fullness of movement. But going down into the ground was never going to be my story as a ballerina or as a dancer in my own physical form. However, in my heart of hearts, I've always wanted to go down. So I was terrified, but I had a lot of fun in the room. The dancers were respectful, so brave, just wildly courageous. They throw themselves on the ground, they run with a lot of fluidity and grace, but they don't hold back in any way.
Lauren Lovette [00:21:35]:
And the willingness that they had to meet me wherever and there was no mirror in the studio and there was just this immediate trust and I felt so alive in this space. And then the pandemic hit and I didn't know what was going to happen at all. None of us did in the dance world, period. So I waited a long time, months and months, to be back in a studio. And it was actually Paul Taylor company that came back into studios long before New York City Ballet ever did. Smaller companies were able to had they were a little bit smaller of a company that helps. They had their own space. They could do socially distanced bubble residency rehearsals.
Lauren Lovette [00:22:26]:
That's what we did. Michael invited me in and he you. Would you have interest in still working with the company? Maybe you can't do your original idea, but we can give you six answers. So I changed my idea, changed my music, made Pentimento. I just love that piece. It's a genistera work and it's beautiful. And so I had a great time working with the dancers. There was a natural symbiotic sort of give and take between us that felt natural and true and just honestly wonderful.
Lauren Lovette [00:23:06]:
And I did the bravest thing I've ever done when it comes to dancing. I went into Michael's office after Pentimento was finished. Handshaking and the whole not. I am definitely more of a personality that waits and listens and takes what is in front of me, what the universe brings and makes the most of that. That's me. Take what happens, what comes, and find a way to be creative with it, mold it, play with it, make it the best it can be and then exist in the world like that. But going out and saying I want that, or being assertive that way and taking something for myself that I might want is not really my personality. I went into Michael's office, and I asked if I could make my original have this.
Lauren Lovette [00:24:10]:
I call everything a ballet. I have this ballet want to do, and it can only be at the Taylor Company. And it really, in my heart of hearts, like, dead true, can't be anywhere else. It wasn't something that I felt I could do anywhere else. I imagined it up for them. And so I said that to Michael Novak, and I have so much respect for this man. So much respect. I wasn't met with, yes, sure, anything like that.
Lauren Lovette [00:24:47]:
He was calm. He didn't say anything for a while. He said, well, we have a lot of our seasons and years booked already, and of course I'll definitely think about it. And I felt it was a no. I thought it was a very kind no. And I left the office and I was like, well, at least I tried. Yeah, I tried. I put myself out there, for better or worse.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:25:21]:
Never do it again.
Lauren Lovette [00:25:22]:
I'll never do it again. I didn't know if it was the right or wrong thing. I just felt that I did that. Okay, well, I have no regrets. And so I left New York City Ballet, and a couple of months later, I got a call from Michael and was offered the position of resident choreographer. And so that really hit me by surprise, especially after that meeting that we had had. I didn't feel that I was a shoe in for the job or anything like that.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:26:01]:
I always assumed you left City Ballet knowing you had this lined up. So that was like an even more brave, way more brave then to just leave and believe that all these things would come.
Lauren Lovette [00:26:17]:
I really didn't have any idea of what I was going to do after I left. I didn't have anything lined up. I'd had a house at the time, so in some ways I felt that my personal life was more solid. But as soon as I gave my notice to leave the company, that also went through a lot of change. And so nothing in my life when I left New York City Ballet was stable. Not one thing, not my relationships, not my housing. I really had lost any sense of comfort or stability. But in that next breath, I felt I had already taken this is so me.
Lauren Lovette [00:27:08]:
I had already taken it to the worst case scenario. I already got there, and I thought, okay, because we had sort of experienced it in a way with the pandemic, we had already experienced what it was like to have the worst case scenario. There's work and we don't know if it's coming back. So I had taken it there and I had thought about it a good deal, and I was ready for whatever I was thinking. I don't have an education. I don't have any proof of high school or even middle school or anything. I was home schooled my whole life, and there's no record of it. And on top of that, I'd never been to college or anything.
Lauren Lovette [00:27:52]:
So the types of jobs that you can get with no experience and no education and no driver's license are not many. And so I learned that over the pandemic. So I new what could have come. And I still wanted to do it because I felt that I needed to get out into the world and I needed to be brave. I didn't want to stay just because I was afraid. Even if it meant that I'm working in a grocery store or something or like, whatever I could get, I'd still be learning new skills. I knew who I was at a very core level. I do know who I am.
Lauren Lovette [00:28:42]:
It's you and me. We're the same. I look at my life horizontally and all the people in it that way. It's not a ladder. It's not a chess game of how I can get this great fame. I want to walk through my life courageously, and I want to do it in a way where I'm just learning and growing. Like it's even. That's what it's about for me.
Lauren Lovette [00:29:16]:
So I felt, okay, if I'm working at Home Depot, I have to learn about all the tools. That's going to be hard. That's going to be exciting. And I was doing home improvement over the pandemic, so I had gone through all these different scenarios in my head and thought, you know what? I'm going to be okay because I know who I am, and that's somebody who loves people and loves to learn. And I have a great work ethic thanks to ballet and my family and how I was raised. And so I thought, you know, I can't really fail. And I also didn't grow up with a lot of money, so I also know what it's like to coupon, and I just knew I'd be all right. So everything that's come after since New York City Ballet has been a surprise and a gift to me.
Lauren Lovette [00:30:07]:
And I don't take it for granted. I don't.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:30:09]:
It's interesting because it probably also makes sense that these things started coming to you because you were more available. Right? I mean, when I see a lot of the New York City Ballet dancers doing all these things, I'm like, how do you people have time for this? Like, you have full jobs at New York City Ballet. It's just so much so I can see as soon as your schedule was much more know, michael Novak probably was, ah, she's probably looking for something. So then things were able to once you what is it like now working with the Taylor Company, now that you're getting more adjusted, you know, the dancers. That must be so fun for you. This is probably other than City Ballet, like, really the first place to feel like there's this group of dancers I can work with consistently.
Lauren Lovette [00:30:49]:
I love it so much more than I ever thought that I would. I'm so interested in meeting people and traveling and having new experiences and growing that way that this job has surprised me in how wonderful it is, how much I love coming back to the same group of people. And it's such a nice small group of people. There's only 16 dancers in the whole company, and so I thought maybe I wasn't sure how it would feel. Would I make the same movement? Would I get stuck? Because so much of how I create things is based off of the inspiration I feel in the dancer themselves and who they are or who I think they are. And that's what's been such a joy and a surprise, really, because I wouldn't have guessed. But people change all the time and they go through life experiences. They have kids, they get married, they have things happen in their lives.
Lauren Lovette [00:31:59]:
They lose loved ones, they go through things. And so this group of 16 dancers, they're not the same people every day, in and out, every day you're coming in. They're not defined in one moment. And I find so much inspiration in that. I sean they change. They surprise me.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:32:23]:
It's funny. We were just interviewing Lara Lubovich, who that interview won't be out yet, but teaser, it's coming soon. But he was talking about how he really liked Choreographing on his or how he felt like he created different works on his company, who he worked with all the time, versus when he went out and was doing gigs and how it was just something different. So I wonder what that experience has been like for you to have that tether of coming back to the same people instead of going out and just new people every single time you're creating something.
Lauren Lovette [00:32:54]:
Yeah, I love it. I love the trust. There's no, um there's always a little bit of space between you and the dancer, always, because you're the choreographer, and that's different. But the immediate trust is there in a different way, for sure. And I do make braver things, I think, for the Taylor Company because they're also willing to go there. That's their legacy. That's what Paul would do. And so, to me, it is the most fun place to create.
Lauren Lovette [00:33:39]:
There's no mirror, like said, it's I don't know. It's just us in the can. They know who I am, so I don't have to explain to them how I work or what the fact that I'm terrible at counting music and all of the things they just know. And they're like, we know that Lauren's going to have a hard time counting this section. Do you hear the bell? Yes, I hear the little bell. Do you hear that little violin? No. Over there? Yes. Okay.
Lauren Lovette [00:34:08]:
And so they know things that make the process more seamless, but also beyond that, I don't want to make the same piece ever twice. And that's the adventure in it for me is we have the same group of people. What are we going to do now? I don't know. It's just so much fun to play. And I have two works happening this November. Should I talk about them? I don't know. I should probably let you have I.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:34:38]:
Want to talk about before we get into those, I want to talk about your second work for the company, because I saw that and I told you this. I think I cornered you somewhere and told you I thought it's your best York ever, I think ever of everything I've ever seen of yours. But it wasn't just like I mean, on its own terms, I think it's your best work ever. But what separately blew me away is, like, you have done the work in immersing yourself in the Taylor background. You clearly have such a fine understanding of the company's history, but also of the technique and the style that those works were made in. And you bring it into your own work without making it sort of like parroting Paul. I just thought it was super impressive and just like a really important must have felt like a really important step for you. Like, now you've done it, you've made something that was excellent on its own terms, but also couldn't have been done somewhere else.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:44]:
And so I want to know what that experience was like and then how that affords you more freedom. Now, you already mentioned that you're feeling like you can experiment or get weirder or make choices. So let's talk a little bit about your second work there.
Lauren Lovette [00:36:00]:
I love solitaire. I love that feel. Well, I'm a lover of Paul's work before I ever got asked to make a commission for their company. So they've been in our theater for years, in the State Theater, david H. Coke Theater, it's been renamed, but that staple in Lincoln center pole, taylor company was there, and I would go and I would see them. So as a ballerina, I didn't get a chance to new York City Ballet works so hard. We know that. I mean, you're just always performing.
Lauren Lovette [00:36:38]:
It's a great gift, but it's also something that makes it very hard to see other things. The last thing you want to do is be in a theater when you have any kind of time off. So I didn't get to see a lot of Graham. I didn't get to see a lot of didn't. I saw some, but it wasn't to the degree that I was able to see Paul Taylor's work. And so I was already a fan of Paul Taylor before I ever got asked to make anything for their company. So I was well versed in the style from a visual standpoint. I hadn't danced it myself, and I'm honestly terrible at sliding around on the ground, but I knew to a degree what they were about and respect it.
Lauren Lovette [00:37:29]:
And cherish that. So solitaire, man, I love that piece. Solitaire I made after I had the opportunity to go to a maximum security prison in California with a good artist friend of mine, Jr. And what I did there was help make a mural, an art project of sorts, with paste and glue, the way that Jr. Does alongside the prisoners. And terrifying experience, also really powerful experience for me in my life. The conversations that I had while I was in the yard of this all male maximum security prison, I will never forget. I will never forget those conversations.
Lauren Lovette [00:38:23]:
So for some reason, the majority of the people that I spoke with had, in one way or another, encountered solitary confinement. And so after the pandemic and after that experience in the prison, I wanted to make solitaire. And it wasn't a card game piece. It was solitaire with quotes underneath it, a stone set alone. And that's what I really felt. I felt like I wanted to share or uncover, discover or dive into loneliness and separation. I had just left City Ballet. I was spending a lot more time alone than I had ever had before.
Lauren Lovette [00:39:11]:
The pain of it, the frustration of it all, the questions, and then the beauty on the other side. And then more than just the beauty of solitude, which is the middle movement of the piece. In the end, you hear it feels like the earnest block piece that I used. It really felt like connection and life and like a field of grass, like a joy. And so that's really where the piece took me, was through that journey into the importance of connection on the other side. And I think that's why I love it so much. Yeah, I love that piece. So that was last November.
Lauren Lovette [00:39:58]:
It was my second work for them.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:40:00]:
And I'm coming up this November at Lincoln Center.
Lauren Lovette [00:40:07]:
Now, I've made four pieces for them already, and I've only been there a little over a year. And that's a really cool feeling to just be able to create that much in a space. Oh, I just love it. So I have Pentimento Solitaire from last November, and then this November, I have two works going. One is Dream Machine, and the second is called Echo. And I'm very passionate about both. Every time I see them in their entirety, the dancers do a run or we do a showing or something like that. I just am overcome, and I feel like that's my favorite thing I've ever made.
Lauren Lovette [00:40:51]:
And then I see the other one, and I go, that's my favorite thing. It's wonderful.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:01]:
Were you always supposed to do two? Oh, tell us about, like, did Michael want you to do two? And then once there were two, did you feel pressure to make them very different from one another? Did you have entirely different concepts? And also, were you making them at the same time? Because that seems crazy.
Lauren Lovette [00:41:20]:
Were you just like twelve to three.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:22]:
We'Re doing this, and then three to six. Tell us all about it.
Lauren Lovette [00:41:27]:
I'm doing right now. It's been great. So basically I wanted to do Dream Machine since the beginning, since my first day of working with Paul Taylor company, this has been my idea. I have wanted to realize this.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:41:42]:
It's was this the one that you went in and tried to this is the one that I went in Michael's.
Lauren Lovette [00:41:49]:
Office and I asked to make. And so to have it be a reality now is and to have it be changing so often, I mean, I just added a second movement to the work. We had a soft premiere in La at the La music center this spring. So I finished a good amount of it, but we were having some question marks regarding costumes and sets and how we would put it together, and budgets and time was limited. And I didn't want to just throw something out. That's just not my style. I don't want to throw out something that I'm not proud of. And so I saved the second movement and I said, you know what? I don't have time to realize it fully.
Lauren Lovette [00:42:40]:
I'm just going to wait. And so it was still a 30 minutes work without the second movement. It was still really a substantial amount of epic. Yeah, it was still epic and it still made sense. And the way that Dream Machine works is it's a series of short stories. Each movement is not supposed to go with the next. They're supposed to be different ideas. And the whole work is about invention, technology, innovation, invention in different capacities.
Lauren Lovette [00:43:18]:
The way that the music was inspired was by the first movement is history. DA Vinci's wings, you can hear it. It's like something being built and breaking down over and over again. It gets built up and it breaks and it's built up and it breaks, and then in the end, it gets built and the music just turns sour or something. It turns green and melty. And I almost cut that part out. And then I realized that in so many ways, that's how I feel about what we're making today, where a new technology comes out and it feels like we did it. And then there's this thing I feel on the inside that goes, what does that mean, actually? Do we want that built? What does that mean for the world? So that's just the first movement of Dream Machine, and each movement has a different inspiration behind it.
Lauren Lovette [00:44:22]:
Second movement is Rube Goldberg. Those cartoons from the newspaper with chain reaction events. Cause and effect, honestly, quirky not. They don't even always make sense in the drawing. You go, well, that wouldn't do that. I don't know. And so it's cartoonish and very playful and colorful and bizarre, honestly. So that's the second movement.
Lauren Lovette [00:44:51]:
It's so much fun to play with that. When it comes to bodies and props, a lot of props in the second movement and color and know the Taylor Company will go there. They're not afraid of acting strange or being goofy or silly. And that's really a fun movement. And then the third one, the music was inspired by this painting that was done this piece of artwork that was done for a scientist that would commission these. He wanted artwork based off of his science. And so it's a really fun painting of an eel with, like, an electric socket. It's called electric eel.
Lauren Lovette [00:45:43]:
And the music is very murky and you can hear it, it's underwater, but there are these little flashes of light or something that happen. And I wanted to do something that slithered because when I think of eels, I think of sliding. And I wanted it to be a duet in four line skates. But then that's honestly the opposite of the Paul Taylor Company. They're grounded, fully planted on the ground and putting wheels on them. Nobody is trained in that. So that idea shifted and molded because we got a new dancer this year and his name is Kenny Corgan and he was a freelance artist for years, someone that I had worked with before at Dance Lab, New York, years ago. Very talented artist.
Lauren Lovette [00:46:34]:
He just joined the company this year and he was born in the knows how to use those shoes that slide called heelies that have the wheel on back.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:46:47]:
Yes.
Lauren Lovette [00:46:48]:
And so I needed a shoe that would slide, but also I needed him to be able to partner and stop and be able to have so I have him in the heelies and I have Jessica Freddy in slippery socks. And so they make the eel duet. And it's so much fun.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:47:09]:
That's cool.
Lauren Lovette [00:47:11]:
Oh, cool. I just am obsessed. So that's the third movement. And then the last movement is inspired by Vulcan Star Trek galactic spaceship, finder of planets mixed with Hephaestus, the maker of weapons of the Greek gods. And you really hear this it's called Vulcan's Vorge. And you hear this central fire pit sound, almost. The whole thing is a percussion concerto. So there's a lot of drum beats and rhythms and bells and galactic sounds.
Lauren Lovette [00:47:53]:
And so it's such a fun way to wrap up the piece. And I needed a dancer that would have a pull, a gravitational pull. And so, to me, that was like, nowadays we have social media and influencers and trendsetters and people that lead and take a fashion choice or something like that. And then you have all these followers that come along and they can't keep up. And so I thought that would be a fun thing. So the last movement, you have an influencer and their followers almost.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:48:33]:
Oh, my God. Amazing.
Lauren Lovette [00:48:36]:
So much fun. It's a playground. It's quirky. It's strange. Santo La Costo is working on that one with me again. He did solitaire as well. I love his ideas. He goes there, he goes silly with me.
Lauren Lovette [00:48:54]:
He can do strange and he's gutsy that way. So I'm excited that's November 1 and then November 2 is my absolute freshest, newest work that I've made for the Taylor Company. Nobody's seen it yet, it hasn't had a soft premiere. It is brand new and something I'm very excited about. I'm using all the Taylor men. It's my first piece I'm doing for all men. And I've had my just questions. I've had questions for the past probably four or five years, because I am such a hardcore, passionate feminist at heart.
Lauren Lovette [00:49:43]:
I love empowering women. I want a world where I can create and create freely and get jobs and feel strong and powerful and all of these things. And then I also care very much about the other gender. I care very much about the men. And especially after going to the maximum security prison, seeing where we've landed politically, in a lot of ways, the past decade has been interesting. I just feel this desire to peer underneath the rock of what I don't understand. And I've been kind of delving into the statistics and incarceration rates, depression, addiction, suicides, drop out of school. All of these statistics are higher in men, and I care about that a lot.
Lauren Lovette [00:50:54]:
So that was going on in me at the same time as the incredible Ulysses. Dove Vespers piece was a desire for Michael to add to the repertoire of the Taylor Company. So it was perfect timing. All the women were being used for that. Michael Novak came to me and said, I have all the men free. Do you want to make a piece for them? And I was like, yes, I have been thinking about this for some time. I want to do that 100%. So I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream, had a dream about this man standing alone in some sort of a deserted place, like a desert or something, and just vocalizing a sound, very loud, deafening sound.
Lauren Lovette [00:51:45]:
It wasn't a song, it wasn't any words. It was alarming. And it startled me awake. And I knew what I wanted the piece to be about, and I wanted it to be about men's voices. Then I got an email, like, the following day, this is how my life works. I got an email from Interesting Facts. I don't even know who signed me up for that publication, but I get these emails and I got one, and it was about sand dunes and wind going through the sand dunes, and how that can be as loud as a rock concert sometimes, and that natural force and that natural power and the wind and voice. I was like, what am I trying to do? What am I trying to say? And I couldn't find music for a long time.
Lauren Lovette [00:52:38]:
I thought maybe I would do something acapella and I would have the dancers like shouting, singing sound, but nothing was really it didn't feel like a resounding yes. There was no idea that I was like, this is the one. And David Lamarche came to Michael Novak because we are very blessed and we get to use the orchestra of St. Luke's. We collaborate with them at Lincoln Center each year and we do standalone music that I love. I love these little mini concerts that happen in the middle of the dance evening. So a piece was presented to Michael Novak by David and it's the extraordinary String trio time for Three playing a Kevin Putz work and it's called Contact. This piece and it's so good.
Lauren Lovette [00:53:38]:
The very first thing that happens in the music is the three soloist musicians sing, they make a sound. And I just thought, I mean, I heard it immediately and I almost cried because I felt like that was exactly what I was looking I it's. I begged Michael. I said, Can I please use it? I know it's supposed to be a standalone piece and they're rock stars. It's incredible. So Time for Three themselves are coming to play live at Lincoln Center on November 2. We are featuring them. I'm finding a way to creatively showcase them and also not have it be distracting to the dance.
Lauren Lovette [00:54:29]:
I want them to be also a symbiotic. I want them to benefit each other. And the whole piece is called echo because I feel that not only does music call forth dance and that's the echo that occurs between music and the dance, I also feel like we have it within each other. And the healing of one human being, the healing of one man will echo into another and another and another and another. And it's been so much fun to work with the dancers at Paul Taylor Company. We have such an array, we have such a the question, what is it? To be a man at the Taylor Company is like the perfect question to be asking. Because we have the most diverse, we have every kind of personality, we have every kind of shape and size and sexual preference and I mean, you name it, they are different, they are all different. And to me, I feel like that's exactly what I wanted was presenting the question, finding that home for it, the atmosphere for it, and the music, and then the dancers just show up as themselves.
Lauren Lovette [00:55:51]:
I don't have to explain what it's like to be a man. I have no idea. I'm a woman. All I have to do is create the space and put them all together. And it's been absolutely wonderful. I love it. I love the work. We're just refining this week.
Lauren Lovette [00:56:09]:
So it is to answer your question, Michael, it is a joy. I go from dream machine to echo every day. And that, I think as a choreographer, is to dream that you get to have these things happening simultaneously. You feel a body of work. I never felt that before. And it's growing and it feels incredible because they're all pieces of me. And it's not even me, it's we. This is something I've been thinking about all week.
Lauren Lovette [00:56:41]:
I love us. That's how I feel every time I watch something that I've made. I think I love us because it's not really me. And it's not all them, it's us. It's we. And I just think it's incredible what I get to do with my life.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:57:05]:
Yeah, that's so I just every time we talk to you, it's like your passion and you're just so sincere in your love of dance. I love that you are getting to live your choreographic dreams. So I hope that everyone in New York will come watch Lauren live her choreographic dreams. This is October 31 through November twelveTH. The Paul Taylor dance company will be performing at FKA state theater, also known as David H. Coke. And something else that I wanted to mention before we head off. There are $20 tickets for those under 40, which is an amazing steal.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:57:44]:
So everybody under 40 me for a little while longer.
Lauren Lovette [00:57:51]:
I love that because I'm past 30, I'm turning 32 and I feel so young. And I think, well, these tickets are expensive. And to be able to feel youthful and young in your 30s is a great thing, I think. Yeah, I love that. The Taylor Company. It's Lincoln Center. You get live music, but it's also affordable.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:58:18]:
Well, thank you so much, Lauren, as always, for joining us. We know you have a crazy busy day between now and the end of the day. So thank you for joining us bright and early at 08:00 a.m.. We appreciate it.
Lauren Lovette [00:58:27]:
Thank you. I love you guys.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:58:28]:
Thank you, Lauren.
Lauren Lovette [00:58:29]:
Well, and I'm sure we'll speak again. We sure will.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:58:38]:
Conversations on Dance is part of the Acastcreator network. For more information, visit conversationsondancepod.com.